Massive Nerfs Inc - Melee, Tanks, Berserkers

We did have an enchanter tank Judicator for us once, and even he admitted that the runes needed nerfing so clearly something had to change.

I'm not sure of whether this change is an appropriate one or whether it overshoots by a mile. It seems odd coming on the back of only just boosting them a month or two ago, but hey this *is* the right time to nerf something. If you make a mistake (incorrectly boosting) then undoing it quickly is the best fix. Leaving things in for years and THEN nerfing (Rest) just causes mass confusion and dislike/distrust.

I see the general aim of this - to make all characters more resource dependent. It happened with Death Bloom, now with wiz claw/harvest, and with melee on Rest. I actually don't think that's necessarily a bad idea, but it needs more than this one change as in isolation it will cause more problems than it can solve. I hope they have many other changes inc too that rebalance it all; such as changes to melee death mechanic and adjustments to regen rates as without them we're just back to sitting and medding again.

This post makes me a happy panda.

This is likely why beta is usually (and rabidly) protected by the NDA. In the cases where you are simply testing the waters, it would do the community a huge benefit by announcing these things to the players that are in beta to avoid the otherwise inevitable 'scared' response by the community. This all boils down to transparency on your (the collective "you" the developers plural) part Elidroth. If you tell us you are simply testing things with no immediate intention of having it go live - for heavens sake just TELL us.

As a player on the Test server (and yes I maintain 'gold' status - so not freeloading) - I understand that testing stuff is a necessary part of this game, both to find bugs/imbalances, test out potential solutions, and push them live if necessary. I accept this as part of my gameplay, and the community here will likewise be understanding. If things are simply tested in a very short beta process, you have to understand how scared the community might be in response to any changes seen in/on beta. I need look no further than the changes to Death Bloom (and subsequent addition of "death blossom" as a cheap apology of sorts) to understand the fear of un-warranted nerfs. Some "nerfing" is necessary from time to time to preserve game balance, but there is a big fear in these parts of confusing changes for no apparent reason - again I will cite the changes to Death Bloom as the ultimate example if failure in this regards.

Communicate with us clearly what your thoughts and intentions are. COMMUNICATE with us when you feel these are necessary, and likewise COMMUNICATE with us when you are simply testing things that have no intention of going live.

My only critique of the current dev team is the lack of communication. I understand you guys are busy. I understand you guys are understaffed and overworked. We get it. We don't like that your parent company does not give you adequate resources, but we get it. We just want you to be open with us and honest with us. If you feel something is broken or needs attention (in a negative way), explain it to us. The players of this game are a generally more mature and more understanding playerbase than you will find in most games these days.

Please - just communicate.

This game is old. The players keeping this game alive aren't new players - but your remaining hardcore fan base. We want this game to live another 15 years. I personally understand the problems you guys face and am willing to byinlarge overlook it. I will also happily pay (even if it is overpriced) my dues for each expansion and the upkeep of this servers - even if the content is lackluster. I'm too cognitively invested in this awesome game (I got hoooked in late high school) to get my "fix" anywhere else.

I want EQ to hit it's 20th Anniversary - 25th if possible? 30th?

The one thing that will kill this game, however, is the lack of communication. We're all adults here. Just be honest about what's happening, the struggles you're facing, and you'd be surprised just how receptive and understanding we'll be. The only wrong thing to do is leave us feeling "left out".

/peace

And may this game continue to go on for years to come!

I feel like nerfing recovery abilities is missing the mark. If the devs feel like those abilities are restricting design space, they're missing the resource that matters to us the most and we have few/no ways to alter or recover; Time.

If an encounter is designed to last 1m, 2m, 3m, 5m or 10m, there is always a limited amount of spells/abilities that we can perform in that time. Mana/end (power) use guides us in how greedy we can be for that duration. But even with our current recovery options, the main goal is to optimize our absolute effects within that time period.

The real change from removing recovery options is that players who die are locked out of contribution to the encounter for a longer period. As the one mana dependent class without a way to recover mana, let me tell you something about being in that state. IT SUCKS. A death already removes a ton of my survivability, clears any discs that I had running, and threatens everyone else in my group with a much quicker death. I can burn a Kiss of Erollisi Marr to recover enough mana to be able to function for my group. I simply can no operate at a full mana dump capacity off that amount, plus I lost all the additional effects that were improving my performance. Removing my recovery option means that after I die to some random occurrence, I can just go afk for 5 minutes, then check back to see how everyone else did.

Melee get the additional penalty of being slowed after a res, so they're already forced to go from full haste to 95% attack speed. Adding in loss of discs with a longer cool down, any melee who dies and gets res'd would still be at a significant disadvantage if they came back with full endurance. Forcing them to sit there without even self-buffing for another 30s to be able to do more than the pitiful amount of auto-atk dps or non-disc'd tanking is crappy gameplay.

Death is already well punished by EQ mechanics, plenty of events add in additional punishments. Removing our ways to slightly recover and continue playing in a reduced and hobbled manner isn't making the game more interesting or deeper. It's just dumping a huge load of BS on the faces of large portion of the player community.

I would imagine Elidroth reading this thread and doing a facepalm. Time to set Chicken Little straight.. the sky is not falling after all.

No, I think he was doing this

This thread went up Friday, and today is Monday.
Seems it takes just one post for some people to forget about:
Bad community stream of information.
Bad content released, which is actually a nice way to say it because you could also say no content.
People just being hugely disappointed. But they have time to play around with nerfs, where should our trust come from? It's all good again, i get it...on rerolled you could see different tunes about stuff.

The thread in the beta forum went up Wednesday. This was post after there were no responses there.

Add to that only a 4 day beta period.

I heard something about the quest line being broken so the raid was inaccessible. I'm sure glad we had ample opportunity to report this to the development team. In other news, four days of testing with no actual testing is not a surefire way to release (lack of) content to an already upset customer-base.
constructive: i feel we need more than 4 days of testing

So remove aggro modifiers from self runes. No more tanking, no more holding aggro.

Does this also go for the wizzy and chanter spell changes?

Better late then never. Look, Elidroth...its great that you have thrown in your two cents here, but you all had ample opportunity to nip this discussion in the bud before it "causes more harm" as opposed to just letting it simmer. People would have been far more reassured had you posted something on Friday unless of course you wanted to gauge the backlash prior to posting anything, since you are doing some major tinkering with abilities many consider to be fundamental. The first rumblings of this appeared Thursday or earlier which is still technically the work week. Regardless, don't push this one off on the players just because you guys took your sweet time to respond, be it because you wanted your weekend or you sat and watched the thread while enjoying some popcorn. Yes, it was the weekend and yes it was Mother's Day but you all also ran a beta this weekend and thus should have been monitoring this, especially if it is discussion related to a beta that should have not left the beta. That is the nature of our modern age. Even if you are not at work, you can still do work.

Anyway, there is a 50/50 chance this will get nuked, since it might be more critical than constructive but yah...you all can do better at communication.

I think the part that worries me the most is, that beta was only running 4 days. I seen a lot of changes, modifications in beta and wonder how 4 days of testing is enough time.

Also seems a majority of the community uses these forums not beta, in that perspective it does feel to them they are being ambushed. Why not share they changes and the reasoning behind them with the masses when they are being tested/developed? would help with the whole transparency thing. But it is nice to see a SOE reply.

I know it's a long quote.
I searched and searched the above post looking for something to trim out to save space, I just could not find even a single paragraph that was "unimportant" enough to trim out.

The poster said it better than I could.
Seeing something "really scary" up on "Beta" or "Test", when the players base knows that a patch is being pushed live in only a few days, is (in light of past history) enough "probable cause" to voice vehement concern over what is seen in there.
A quick post here earlier, could have been an easy, "pre-emptive", approach to the inevitable panic.

I'll go back to the wonderful example of the way Mental Contortion was handled by Elidroth and the Enchanter community over in the Casters section. Before anything hit any Beta or Test of any kind - Elidroth told the Enchanters of the basic problem, and the desired result of any changes. Then, good clean suggestions came from The Enchanters as to how to achieve the end goal. (The Enchanters don't always agree on details - but they are all smart and well intentioned people.) It took a very short thread with minimal effort needed after Elidroth's original post - to sort it out quickly.
The result was no threads like this one, the one in melee, and one in the casters forum regarding the Beta changes seen. This because informed people are just not as reactive (or scared) as people left out in the dark can be.

Staying with the Enchanter example to move forward. I'm assuming Enchanters "rune tanking" named mobs etc. is likely the underlying concern here. (just a "wild guess" - LOL)
Even nervous and unsolicited, Your Enchanters have suggested a method to retain the survivability they were just recently granted with their rune boost - and yet kill the option of them "rune-tanking" via nerfing the aggro effect. That's a real good starting place for what's likely to be another easy dialogue.
Like the above poster said: We're all adults here, we understand time is money.
Ours is too.
-Rat

I'm wondering if some of you are aware of a great way to get xp/aaxp and grind through content in general.

It sounds like many of you are seeing your ability to "do your job" after running out of endurance at the 10 minute mark.

What I've found is pushing yourself to burn through mana/endurance hard then resting at the 10 minute mark is faster than slowly chugging away at things.

Give it a try, you might enjoy the outcome.

I wonder if my Cleric heals are going to be nerfed next, as I can also tank content while healing myself, and letting damage shield / turn undead / etc kill it off.

To add on to a previous poster, I said awhile ago (before being suspended, lol) that the biggest area here is the concern from the playerbase; not because of the tweaks that developers are implementing, but rather the lack of communication from the Community Relations and Development staff members.

Well ya - that's kinda what happens. You'll find no argument there.
The issue is, that the observed nerf to "rest" itself - would greatly hamper the ability to do so efficiently and restore prductivity in a timely manner. (Not to mention convey a huge "death penalty" for raiders.)
-Rat

This does little to reassure me. It appears that significant game changes are being developed, and won't be presented to the player base until they are set in stone. Its good to hear that Furious Rampage isn't being nerfed, but changes to Rest may critically impact my class.

In a group situation (which is most of my play time), Berserkers and Rogues don't have much to offer a group other than DPS. They need to be competitive to caster DPS classes. In groups I try to maintain high DPS by using everything my class has. As a result I burn through my endurance, which makes Rest crucial for my gameplay.

Rat, what you have said here is why the enchanter nerf discussion was probably better handled. In the case of the runes, it an area that enchanters themselves might consider over powered and if it were toned down, it would have very minimal impact on their roles. Yes, some weaker geared and AAed enchanters will become more easily killed. Still, it is a very fine tuned style of nerf aimed at one specific ability.

The Rest nerf (and the wizard nerf to a lesser degree) on the other hand is broad spectrum and vastly game changing and further beats down classes that have already lost some ground. Just the very fact that it is being fiddled with means the developers are eying a huge paradigm shift. Perhaps the exponential curve that represents the increase in player power over the years needs to be flattened out a bit to be able to continue to design future content and this is an exploration of that. If so, than the dev team needs to state their intentions as such. Even if it is just a reiteration of a past announcement.

Well yes,
Absent any declarative statement regarding any "bigger picture", the fact that it is being "fiddled with" can only be taken at "face value". And at "face value" it looks to be "game changing" and done to an ability that's been around and used for years.
The secondary problem arises - that it's emergence is "linked" (via coincidence?) with what many deem "too small" an addition to CotF. CotF itself, an expansion that SOE has already acknowledged to get a "less than desired" reception from the masses.
In business "timing is everything" sometimes. And if timing conspires to work against you - then communication is the only tool you have to combat that.
-R